Mom never asked either. She’s not one to pry. But whenever I’d talk to her about it—about the silence in our house, about the ache in me she also felt but never acknowledged—she’d give me a hug and whisper the same thing every time:
All in God’s time, Tori. All in God’s time.
Not helpful. Not actually comforting.
Reflecting back on my upbringing, on the way my parents never really took the time to go deeper than surface-level, faith-based answers and manipulated Bible verses, I can see why I was so drawn to Chase Martin.
In my fifteen-year-old brain, if my perfect, God-loving parents never had to fix me or themselves, then we must have been the perfect example of a stable, loving family.
That’s exactly what Chase needed, right?
A boy who had no parents, who had been passed around in foster care, who carried scars he never admitted out loud but showed in every reckless decision he made—he needed someone steady.
Someone pure. Someone who could play savior.
And if I was solely focused on what Chase needed, then I never had to look too closely at myself. I never had to acknowledge how hollow and weak an entire life of perfection and Christian platitudes had left me.
The truth is, Chase didn’t necessarily make me small… because in so many ways, I already was.
And what Chase couldn’t handle—what I refused to let go of once it took root in my soul and started to grow—wasn’t a reclaiming of anything I had lost because of him. It wasn’t about winning myself back. It was about discovering something I didn’t even know I had.
It was strength.
It was the sense of self I had to develop just to keep loving him, to keep fighting for a relationship that should have fallenapart a hundred times over. A self I didn’t know before, because I’d never had the opportunity to meet her, to test her, to see just how extraordinary and stubborn and resilient Victoria Anne Foster was capable of being.
I had to become someone who could stand her ground, who could demand answers, who could hold up the weight of a marriage and a man who couldn’t hold himself. I had to become someone who could survive heartbreak after heartbreak and still get up in the morning.
And maybe I became that woman for him at first, but somewhere along the way, I realized I was becoming her for me.
So, yes. I may have attached myself to Chase Martin in an unconscious, feeble attempt to fill the void inside myself that needed more… that needed a purpose, something to make me feel less ordinary, and also so I could have a person to love.
And, yes, that naive fifteen-year-old girl was so far in over her head when she thought she could save the lonely, broken foster boy from his life of pain and tragedy.
But I did love him. Truly. Madly. Deeply.
I’ll always love him in some way.
I don’t regret loving him. We had some really wonderful times together.
Also, without all the decisions I made in the past, without the pain, the suffering, the heartache… I never would have met myself.
And I’m really, really glad that I met her.
She’s a little bruised, but she’s sharp. She’s the girl who won’t sit quietly when someone dismisses her. The woman who can survive a marriage cracking down the middle. The one who can look at herself in the mirror and recognize both the mistakes and the grit it took to keep walking forward.
She’s feisty, and fun, and apparently goes down on grieving men in copy rooms.
Who knew?
And here’s the thing—old me, the girl who lived to orbit around Chase, would never have done that. She would’ve been too worried about what it meant, what other people would think, whathewould think.
She would’ve swallowed down her own curiosity (instead of his cum—ba-dum-tss), her own hunger, and let someone else’s comfort or judgment dictate her choices.
But this version of me? The one who’s met herself in the fire of everything I thought would destroy me?
She doesn’t wait for permission. She doesn’t apologize for wanting, for trying, for getting it wrong sometimes.
That’s what the copy room was. Not just the hottest moment of my life—and God, it was—but a moment where I felt likeme.
